ISTANBUL – Authorities in southern Turkey have retrieved the bodies of two miners who were among 18 trapped in a coal mine that flooded 10 days ago, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.

Both bodies have been taken to a local hospital, and search operations continue for the other miners, the agency said Friday. The Dogan news agency said the bodies were retrieved late Thursday from the Has Sekerler mine near the town of Ermenek in Karaman province.

Authorities have been trying to pump out 12,000 tons of water from the mine, Dogan said.

In May, a fire inside a coal mine in Soma, western Turkey, killed 301 people in Turkey's worst mining disaster and exposed poor safety standards and superficial government inspections in the country's mines.